I think that Doolally’s post Is God a Bigamist? deserves a bit more consideration for one reason… it’s an excellent question.

I mean the bible is literally chock full of God Romance, isn’t it? All through the narrative in the Old Testament we see God pursuing His people like a lover pursuing a flirting, impetuous girl. In the prophets we see God’s jealousy and anger at her waywardness, so easily abandoning her covenant with Him. And Song of Songs is so sexually explicit that it should be rated.
In the New Testament it’s a little more doctrinal but the same theme carries straight on. Right up till Revelations where we find what can only be described as the consummation of a great marriage – The Wedding Feast of all wedding feasts. God, it turns out, will get married to His people.

Well then, is Doolally not right? After all there are many people, and only one God.
Yes, Doolally is right, but not in the way she describes, she stops too soon, at an observed religious devotion. Doolally is describing religious monasticism – nuns and monks, as if there was a choice between marrying a person and marrying God. As if God was jealous somehow of human sexual intimacy and only those sexually pure enough get to marry God.

I don’t blame Doolally for this view, it’s the default presentation of the church to the world (in fact I feel like I should apologise for it). But thankfully, it’s not the biblical view. And when one looks it becomes very obvious as to why forced celibacy for the clergy is the wrong approach in Christianity.
It’s not even biblical; the first four verses of 1 Timothy 4 calls it a demonic doctrine taught by “hypocritical liars”.
Celibacy itself may not be wrong for an individual, in fact I would think for some marriage would be completely wrong, but to force those serving in the church to remain single is about as unbiblical as one can get. It’s in the same league as the Crusades. And Doolally is spot on when she says: “By denying sex to priests, the church is creating its own problems.” More accurately by denying the human covenant of marriage to priests; with all the warmth, friendship, honesty and intimacy that goes with it (including sex); the church is creating its own problems.
I’ts so anti-biblical that I cannot see how such a place can even be called a church.

The answer to the accusation of Divine bigamy is, I believe, found in a little mystery we call “unity”. Another thread running through scripture from Adam & Eve through the tower of Babel right into the New Testament and on to the same Marriage Consummation. God is not marrying a multiple personality disorder, He is marrying one bride. How that will work I only have little personal glimpses.
I can see that my wife and I can sometimes be ‘one’. the way we talk and think (some people say we even look like eachother). As time goes on we get better and better at it; and it’s not all sexual ‘oneness’ I’m talking about – although that tends to be the oneness foremost in my mind… what can I say, I’m a man.
If unity exists in a Platonic sense – there must be an ultimate Unity. If there is an ultimate Unity, then the Bride of God would be it.
Why are there many of us, not just one? Why did God not leave that rib in Adam? Why go to all the trouble of taking it out, making a woman and then presenting her to him, and then calling them “one flesh”? Adam was ‘one flesh’ in the beginning, what’s the added complication all about?
It’s about Unity, it’s a reminder, the whole Adam/Eve narrative is a metaphor. Keeping Adam single would have been very pragmatic (and he would not have known the difference)… but there would have been no human relationship, no intimacy… and no sex.
Forced sexual denial by religious celibacy ultimately means absolutely nothing except perhaps confusion and frustration. Paul puts it quite well in 1 Corinthians 15:19 “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” More so for those who don’t even get to have sex in the hope that their religious piety will somehow give them favour with God!

Now by extension we cannot conclude that if forced religious celibacy is wrong then animal, pheromonal sex – ‘whenever and with whomever’ sex – is logically right. An excess of Stoicism does not vindicate a lifestyle Hedonism.
I would suggest that if you are going to look for a biblical model of sexuality you are going to find sexual pleasures that are more satisfying and lasting than your wildest expectations – I suggest this because I have looked and I have found. But sex is not an end in itself. Like I said, we tend to stop too soon, we draw conclusions on other’s faith instead of finding out for ourselves.
We think that the bible is always trying to make us control our passions (especially sexual ones), because they are too strong… actually the bible is trying to open our eyes to what heights of sustained ecstasy our passions can take us under the right bridle (if you’ll excuse the pun). We tend to settle for so little when we could have so much.

I think that what the bible says about sex is that finding Mr Right starts with finding the right God, it does not work the other way round. He’s not jealous of our sexuality, actually He designed sex to remind us of a happiness and fruitfulness we have forgotten so thoroughly that we cannot even remember having forgotten it!

I was listening to a talk given by Richard Dawkins the other day; Richard Dawkins, if you don’t know, is a Professor of Biology at Oxford who calls himself a militant athiest. In his talk the Professor made a number of statements that got me thinking. One of them was this: “We are all atheists about most of the gods humanity has believed in, some of us just go one god further.“

He was speaking about all people, including theists and he is, in the first point, quite right. We are indeed all atheists about most of the ‘theos’, the supposed deities, that men have believed in over time.

But I disagree with his second point, “some of us just go one god further.” I think Professor Dawkins is not being very honest, the truth is that we all go ‘one god further’, even Professor Dawkins goes, as he says ‘one god further’.

Instead of putting himself into an new enlightened position as he supposes, the Professor has instead put himself back at the beginning. I’d like to suggest that this stance is merely a development dressed up as progress, it is not progress at all. In fact evolution, by definition, denies progress altogether. Evolution is a philosophy of development, rolling out of one change and rolling into another, going somewhere while going nowhere. It is a thought older than history itself and instead of revealing something new it simply shuffles the hand we’ve been dealt.

A little while ago I was in Washington State in the USA and I caught one of those marvellous ferries from Bremmerton to Seattle, these ferries are like floating malls they each carry about 50 or 60 cars, perhaps more, and I’m sure they could carry more than a thousand people. One thing which struck me was that when one boards the ferry one is not too sure where the ferry itself starts and where land ends. There is a complicated system of rails and ramps, and the boat (if I may call it that) is so big that the waves don’t make it move enough for me to be sure that at any time I have left the land. One has the urge to go further onto the boat just to make sure one is actually on it.

I think that illustrates Professor Dawkins’ position quite well. He assumes that he is on the land speaking to all the people on the boat and he’s calling all on the boat who are unsure of it’s destination to come off of it to where he is. But he is mistaken, what is really dry land is much further back from where he is standing and it is getting further away while he is standing still. This is so because if he were to take an honest look back, he would see that not only is he in the same boat, but also the vessel has already been launched from the docks and is sailing off.

“Complexity,” says the professor, “is the problem which any theory of biology has to solve, and you can’t solve it by postulating an agent that is even more complex thereby simply compounding the problem.” But has the professor not done exactly the same thing? If one were to ask him what it is then that he believes he would not answer, “I believe in nothing for I can prove nothing.” Many thousands of years ago the Greek Cynics began to answer the question exactly like that. Using my illustration that stance would be indeed to remain on the shore or to jump off the boat and attempt a swim back.

The true cynic does not call all other cynics out of hiding because if one calls ones-self a “respectable cynic” (who is guided by some impulse to be an honest voice in the community, saving people from errors of the past) then one is no cynic at all. If the Professor is not a cynic then he must have a belief. He calls it a theory but don’t be blinded by the semantics, a theory is simply a belief. I say ‘don’t be blinded by the semantics‘, I do not mean ‘don’t be blinded by the science‘. The science is not what concerns me at all. In fact what I wish is that the evolutionist adherence to the rules of English were as rigid as their adherence to the rules of science.

A theory of biology, or any other theory, does not solve anything, neither does it have to to remain a theory (a bad theory is just as much of a theory as a good one). Professor Dawkins says it does. In the same way the belief in a deity does not bring that deity to life (a wrong belief is just as much a belief as a right one). A theory may legitimately exists without there being any way at all of proving it either way, and we are called every day to reject hundreds of them, in the same way that mankind has been asked over the centuries to reject hundreds of ‘theos’.

What is it that makes professor Dawkin’s theory ‘the one to believe‘? It must be all the proof, the fact that the theory solves the complexity problem and so graduates from theoryhood to become truth… But it is not presented with such proof, or have I missed something? I have yet to read of evidence, and even if I had, on what grounds should I believe it. What I have heard is a lot of suppositions, suppositions that would turn Socrates over in his grave.

Here are some examples:

Dan Dennett says about sheep’s symbiosis with man that it is a “clever move of natural selection itself.” I would like to know how it is that a process is able to make a clever move? Perhaps he is a closet Jedi, expressing his belief in Mediclorians? He goes on; “The designs discovered by natural selection are brilliant, unbelievably brilliant… but the process itself is without purpose, without foresight, without design… The design is there in nature but it’s not in anybody’s head, it doesn’t have to be, that’s the way evolution works.” Well, this Natural Selection character is sounding almost as much like a person as I have been lead to believe that Evolution herself must be; if it does not ‘create’ then it is able to ‘discover’ Not even animals discover. “that’s just the way evolution works,” is a statement of faith in the same category (or boat) as “you are the Christ, the son of the living God.” Mr Dennett it seems has as much faith as Professor Dawkins.

Professor Leslie Orgel who died this year said “evolution is cleverer than you are.” Well if that is the case then Evolution must be more of a person than I am. Unless one takes the Buddhist stance that we are in the process of becoming God along with everything else and that God is the sum total of everything, which is precisely nothing. If that is the case, we come all the way back to that troubling old word ‘God’; concept, person or both and we have to answer a very silly question: How can nothing do so many brilliant, and clever things?

Paul Mccready says “Over billions of years on a unique sphere chance has painted a thin covering of life, complex, improbable, wonderful and fragile. Suddenly we humans a recently arrived species no longer subject to the checks and balances inherent in nature have grown in population, technology and intelligence to a position of terrible power. We now wield the paint brush.” I feel a little like a child told about Santa for the first time who asks ‘but how does he get round the world in one night?‘ I’d ask Paul Mccready 2 questions: 1. How is it that chance managed such a complex and wonderful living painting with inherent checks and balances (none of which I deny)? You see, when I leave my car, my dog, my garden, my work or anything else to chance it seems to go in quite the opposite direction (he does not dignify chance with a capital letter even though he treats her as a person, when I went to school proper nouns were always spelt with a capital; I wonder if his ‘chance’ character ever gets mad?). Perhaps his answer would be that there is chance and there is Chance, but he’d probably like to avoid looking like he’s trying to appease her. Perhaps he’s Buddhist in which case he’d much rather appease you and I who, after all are becoming God. The only other answer I could imagine he would give is that this statement is only a theory, by definition incomplete, and that one should not jump to faith conclusions based on flowery English, that for all he knows chance could very well be a person, by his language she certainly acts like one. But then he should say so should he not? 2. The other question I’d ask is this: How can something as sublime as this chance, be so clumsy at to hand the brush over to us humans?

My concerns are language and logic concerns, not scientific ones. Perhaps all of these faith statements (Christian preaching included), like cigarette packets, should carry a health warning. “Listening to these theories could induce you to believe them as fact.” But that is what all honest theistic preaching does. It calls people to faith when faith is all they can have. It does not, like the preaching of the non-thiest, call true what is yet to be established and so, by poor English alone, hide in the small print the faith deposit required to believe the theory.

I think it is worthwhile debating weather or not Darwin’s theory (or any other) is true, what I cannot live with is a theory that denies faith in anything and then asks people to assume it’s true while still calling itself a theory. It is like saying “Faith is a concept we intellectuals have grown out of, except faith in our theory which must be true because we’re intellectuals.“

If a theory’s job is to answer a problem then only upon answering it satisfactorily to the rigourous demands of logic does it graduate. It is then no longer a theory but a fact.

This is a very difficult thing, the Existentialists demand that the only theory to have done it is the theory of self. The Christians say that the theory of Christ has done it and in so doing He has qualified a number of other theories as fact. And the Athiests seem to be swaying (because sway they must) towards evolution’s theory. These are all unestablished theories, all of them requiring faith in a concept that becomes more and more a person the longer one looks at it. Only one of them is honest enough to admit to requiring faith in a super-natural person right from the start.

Evolution’s theory described as a myth would look something like this: Evolution is very much like a benevolent, super-relaxed, all powerful, active yet unconscious female goddess. She has a daughter called Natural Selection who seems slightly more conscious but unable, it seems, to ask “where am I? who am I?” Everything is kept in some order, despite their dream status, by what can best be described as a third person, a spirit, the spirit of Nature who keeps house, keeps the other two from bumping into things and causing too much damage, points their wands in the right directions and such. Nature is either mortally afraid or incapable (no one is sure which) of waking them, but she has no real power of her own. They form, in fact, a trinity related somehow, one would think, to the Adams family… Looking at evolution this way it is clearly a religion too. It’s easy to poke fun at a myth one does not believe, but doesn’t one gets offended when fun is poked at a myth one does believe?

Dawkins admits it himself when he says: “When athiests like Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein use the word god they use it of course as a metaphorical shorthand for that deep mysterious part of physics which we don’t yet understand.” I use the word God as a metaphorical shorthand for the deep mysterious person which I have no hope of ever really understanding. Both of these postulations require a measure of faith my friends; and neither of them solve the complexity problem. Mine requires less faith because it does not pretend or even attempt to solve the complexity problem, the atheist’s postulation does pretend to solve it.

Even belief that there is truth as opposed to non truth is a theory. A concept that only the cynics deny. In fact the cynic can be defined as one who is an ‘atruthist‘, which is more of a problem for him than it is for the sceptic who says that his reason causes him to doubt his reason. The cynic says that his reason causes him to deny his reason. That is like presenting with stomach juices so strong that they dissolve even one’s stomach. It is an agonisingly fatal position.

The evolutionist is no cynic, he has spent too much time and money at school to take such a position. But the evolutionist’s disciples will have no such advantage to take for granted. They will be true cynics.

Evolution says that authority exists but is perpetually sleeping. How long then until its stewards attempt what they think will be an easy coup? It has been attempted before.

Personally speaking I battle to believe this evolutionary theology, I think there are better theologies; so I am an Aevolutionist and I am calling all those closet Aevoltuonists out there to nail their colours to the mast; to refuse to be bullied by a vigilante theory of the intelligencia, who, like a self-appointed clergy, have moved into the neighbourhood offering an intellectual protection that the average man fears to refuse. An IQ Mafia with 180+ thugs who threaten to ridicule the 100 man. We must protect future generations from an age darker than the world has ever seen. Where every every ‘right’ is called “stupid irrationality” and every ‘wrong’ is called “pragmatic” by the priests of the spirit of Nature.

I think that kitchenware is wonderfully useful stuff, what I cannot tolerate though is a used pot calling a kettle black.